Lest We Forget

On August 6 1945, at 8.15am, a US military aircraft dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The device, containing 20,000 tonnes of TNT, was more than 2,000 times more powerful than any bomb used up until that time. Approximately 45,000 of Hiroshima's 300,000 residents died on the day of the bombing. Those within 500 metres of where the bomb landed were vaporised. It is estimated that 140,000 people lost their lives.

A second, larger, bomb was dropped three days later on the city of Nagasaki. 70,000 people were killed and tens of thousands of others injured.